King's backing it became clear why the route into King's College Chapel that night had been so effortless, why so many doors that should have been locked had been opened. Gresham wondered whether the intended finale for the evening would not have been the death of Marlowe anyway.
'The story is a simple one,' Gresham said. Well, probably it was. The problem was that he had not yet written it. Gresham looked again to the King.
'Your Majesty, Sir Edward is correct in that I had failed to trace Marlowe. He despises me, by the way. I was instrumental in getting him over to France, but for whatever reason things went wrong for him after that and I became an object of his hatred. He attempted to murder me and my wife at The Globe theatre. By means of several vagabonds and a crossbow bolt. I'd even greater desire than Sir Edward to find Marlowe. He was a personal threat to me and my dearest, as well as to my ruler.'
James was clearly interested now. He had not sipped at the wine for minutes, was leaning forward with his head cupped in his hands, his eyes fixed on Gresham. James had enjoyed interrogating witches in the past, Gresham remembered, and had seen himself as a skilled cross-examiner. Unfortunately the witches had ended up being burned alive.
'Your Majesty, on the night in question I was visited by a drunken sot who is one of my Cambridge informers. Long Lankin by name. He'd seen Marlowe in a house. Long Lankin, and the college porter who saw me eject him after midnight, will confirm what happened. They're both simple men, not able to deceive. I set off to see if Marlowe was still there.'
'Alone, Sir Henry? Set off alone at night when by your own admission you knew you faced attempts on your life? Can we believe-?' Coke's tone expressed total disbelief.
So, to Gresham's intense surprise at her interruption did Jane's. 'Yes, Your Majesty, we can believe! Hard though I found it to believe, and hard though I sought to make my husband's life when
I heard of his crass idiocy!' Jane, silent until now, had risen to her feet, her head still bowed in deference to her King, her every muscle tense, her eyes flashing. 'A lawyer' — what a world of scorn there was in her voice — 'would have waited for other people to act, would have considered his position, hidden behind someone else, sat back, weighed the odds. A normal, sensible man would have waited for help, called out to servants! A normal, sensible man would have stopped to think! Yet my husband is neither normal nor sensible. He is a fool, Your Majesty, a fool who cannot resist the excitement of action and who throws caution to the wind if by haste he can speed up the resolution of an incident. I sometimes think he is in a hurry to meet his own death, and has been since the day he was born.'
'And you still love him?' James's voice was flat, without emotion.
'Your Majesty, I have no option,' she said simply. James looked at her for a moment, with the dark, dead eyes of a fish. He nodded to her, not without courtesy. She bowed her head and retreated to her seat.
'Carry on, Sir Henry.*
'Your Majesty, I followed Marlowe and his servant to the chapel. Followed them in. Saw the servant take a satchel out from behind the beams in the space between the vaulting and the roof. I knocked out the servant and took the satchel from him. Marlowe threw a knife at me. I threw that same knife back, hit him in the arm. I had partly tied them both up, intending to remove them to a place of safe-keeping, when I heard a noise from the roof. I went up. Whoever it was tried to knock me off the ridge. I killed him, after he had tried to kill me. Only then did I realise it was Heaton.'
'Why did you hurl him off the roof?' It was Coke, trying to wind himself up again.
'He still had breath and some blood in him after I pierced his neck with my sword. I hung him over the parapet to try and extract information from him. Why was he there? Who'd sent him? Why had he tried to kill me? He was the King's servant. It seemed wise to know
…' Gresham turned and gave a low bow to the King '… if I was indeed to have my murder sanctioned by Your Royal Highness. He died before he could speak, and slipped off the parapet. When I got back to the vaults, Marlowe had gone.'
'And if your actions were so innocent to the King's interests, why have you not returned these letters to me or to His Majesty?' Coke was almost screaming.
'Because the satchel was empty.'
There was a horrified pause.
'Empty?' It was Coke.
'And wad you be guid enough…' the accent was as thick as sour cream now'… to tell your King why you think it might have been so?'
'There is only one explanation,' Gresham replied. He said no more. The tension mounted with the silence. 'Go on!' said Coke.
'Nicholas Heaton. I guess he removed the actual papers some time beforehand.'
'Preposterous!' exploded Coke. 'Your evidence?'
'It is reasonable to suppose that Marlowe had told Heaton roughly where the papers were hidden. He would have to have done so, for Heaton to arrange for the relevant doors to be left unlocked. Yet there are very many bays behind the beams, any one of which might have held the papers. You have to reach over a top layer of bricks to feel inside the bays. There is years of dust and bird droppings on top. Do you still have Heaton's clothes? If you do, you will notice that the bottom half of the sleeves on his tunic are soiled with just such dirt, and part torn. I noticed it immediately. I think Heaton had searched several of the bays before he found the one with the papers in it. He took them out before Marlowe arrived.'
'Why would one of the King's servants do such a thing?' asked Coke, floundering.
'You are innocent in the ways of espionage, Sir Edward, for all your skill in a court of law!' Gresham was scathing. 'The charitable reason was that Heaton did not trust Marlowe, was expecting some surprise or other. Far more likely is that Heaton intended to use the papers for his own advantage. It is my guess that he would have killed Marlowe and his servant, perhaps coming back to you and saying the papers were not there. More likely, you'd never have seen him again. He would've sold the papers to the highest bidder and vanished overseas with the proceeds.'
‘Is this not disloyalty beyond belief?' Coke spluttered.
'Think, Sir Edward.' Gresham was lecturing now. 'For years the man had bullied and chased for Robert Cecil, dealing with the lowest of low life and, no doubt, taking bribes as a matter of course. Important and loyal enough to be granted a new job, surely, but with none of the access to that master that guaranteed him so much favour with his first employer. A servant's wages, Sir Edward? Compared with the value of those papers, and a life in the sun where he would never have to call another man master?
'Your Majesty, I do not have those papers,' continued Gresham, his eyes meeting those of King James directly and without flinching, i never did. I do have the satchel in which they were contained. No doubt you are searching my homes now. You'll find nothing, except the satchel. My people in Cambridge will confirm what I have said. And if you send a messenger up into the vault of King's College Chapel, ask him to check how many of the bays behind the roof beams have had their layer of dirt and dust recently disturbed. See if Heaton's tunic has been kept, and examine it. Or ask of those who stripped him before his burial.'
'So you did nothing, Sir Henry,' mused the King, 'because you thought it might be myself who wished to dispose of you? Are you willing to call a king a murderer then?' The silkiness of James's tone did nothing to diminish its menace.
‘I would be most loath to do so, Your Majesty. Yet Your Majesty will understand me if I say that where there are plots, a wise man considers that all things might be true until they are proved false.'
James had survived the Bye and the Gunpowder plots to kill him, as well as an attempt to blow him up in Scotland. 'I will suggest, with the greatest respect, that despite Sir Edward's attempt to have me beheaded, you've more need of my services than ever. Sir Edward is a great lawyer. He's a babe in swaddling clothes when it comes to darker matters. Those letters are still around. 1 will find them. I will return them to their author. If I am so permitted by Your Majesty.'